Bluffton goes back on 3-percent raises in 2013 budget

Bucking the trend among neighboring cities, Bluffton’s Town Council approved a budget that dropped a 3-percent wage increase for all full-time employees endorsed by the town’s chief executive and mayor.

Instead, Bluffton will use the money Town Manager Anthony Barrett budgeted for the first across-the-board raise of base salaries in four years to possibly hire a full-time public information officer, offer one-time bonuses and base pay raises on a discretionary basis, and commission a study that evaluates the competitiveness of current public salaries.

Although Barrett once said all employees “deserve consideration” for a pay bump that he argued should “probably be 6 or 7 percent to keep with market rates,” the council disagreed.

“In this instance it was my judgment as the Town Manager that after four years the Town employees deserved an across-the-board increase in pay and also they would have an opportunity for a merit bonus based on performance,” he wrote in an email. “Council did not see it that way.”

He added that he hasn’t changed his mind about the possible need to raise pay across the board to meet market rates, but the pay study — the first since 2007 — will help make that clearer.

“Under South Carolina law the Mayor and Council make public policy,” he said. “And, although employee pay is the domain of the Manager in the Council-Manager form of government, it is my job to carry out public policy decisions of the governing body.”

But if competitiveness is the justification for raising pay for all town employees, Councilman Mike Raymond doesn’t see the logic.

“That used to be done to remain competitive,” he said. “You had to do that to maintain your workforce. But that’s no longer true. We are in a highly competitive environment in terms of employment, and when we put a job posting out there we’ll get 60 to 100 applications.”

Applications for a new police chief to replace the outgoing David McAllister topped 100 last week.

“My argument was we don’t need to do this,” Raymond said. “We’re not losing people to other entities that are paying more, so the question becomes: ‘Why are we doing it?’”

Town Manager Van Willis of Port Royal said his town extended a 3-percent increase to all 37 full-time employees because, “We wanted to do something for our employees” after passing on a pay increase during the current year, though, unlike Bluffton, Port Royal isn’t covering health premium hikes.

Beaufort included a 3-percent increase for its 119 employees for the first time since the 2010 fiscal year because the city has historically preferred employee-wide raises, said City Manager Scott Dadson.

Hardeeville decided on a 5-percent raise after four years without sweeping increases to keep employees from looking elsewhere when the economy does pick up, said City Manager Bob Nanni.

Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka favored that approach, calling an employee-wide raise a “proactive” way to show appreciation.

Like Bluffton, though, Hilton Head has opted for a pool of merit-based raises for its 241 full-time employees. The island has maintained a policy of awarding raises to base pay strictly on performance evaluations for at least 15 years, said Town Manager Steve Riley.

Raymond, who, along with Councilman Ted Huffman first spoke out against a sweeping raise at a May 21 meeting, noted that the town has offered merit raises since the last employee-wide raise four years ago while also covering increases to insurance premiums and pension costs. The town also instituted a raise for employees earning less than $50,000.

Raymond’s chief objection is the permanence of large-scale increases to base salaries and the assumption that these locked-in costs have to happen on a regular basis.

“That’s a new line in the sand that never comes back,” he said. “It just expands our expenses from now on. It’s wrong to think that, because it happened in the past, we need to continue it in the future.”